SCOTUS Watch

[Pyperkub]

Per buzzfeed, the matter has been referred to the FBI:

The attention on it burst into the public when The Intercept published a report on the rumors surrounding the letter on Wednesday.

“This matter has been referred to the FBI for investigation,” Sen. Dick Durbin told BuzzFeed News when asked about the letter on Thursday.

In a statement later Thursday, Feinstein confirmed that she had referred the letter to "federal investigative authorities."

“I have received information from an individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court," Feinstein said. "That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities.”

[hepcat]

I would normally say that this smacks of an unfair smear campaign. But Trump created the handbook for this kind of behavior, so screw Kavanaugh. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Or in this case, the mud.

[GreenGoo]

I would normally say that this smacks of an unfair smear campaign. But Trump created the handbook for this kind of behavior, so screw Kavanaugh. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Or in this case, the mud.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled. The time for justice was 35-40 years ago when the event happened, assuming it happened, and assuming it's not some sort of ongoing sex cult with minors.

Still, he's a bit of a skeeve to begin with, and as you said, welcome to politics in 2018.

Without details (and I'll be honest, I don't want to know. I'm tired) it's impossible to figure out my outrage levels. Right now they are non-existent.

[Carpet_pissr]

I would normally say that this smacks of an unfair smear campaign. But Trump created the handbook for this kind of behavior, so screw Kavanaugh. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Or in this case, the mud.

Damn you for making me defend Trump, but to be fair, he hardly created the handbook for political smearing.

[El Guapo]

I would normally say that this smacks of an unfair smear campaign. But Trump created the handbook for this kind of behavior, so screw Kavanaugh. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Or in this case, the mud.

Yeah, I'm not thrilled. The time for justice was 35-40 years ago when the event happened, assuming it happened, and assuming it's not some sort of ongoing sex cult with minors.

Still, he's a bit of a skeeve to begin with, and as you said, welcome to politics in 2018.

Without details (and I'll be honest, I don't want to know. I'm tired) it's impossible to figure out my outrage levels. Right now they are non-existent.

If it was in high school, hasn't the statute of limitations passed? Seems unlikely that the FBI would be able to do much with this. Seems like the more feasible outlet would be to talk to reporters, and get them to do some digging and write something up on what probably happened.

We'll see what happens, I guess.

[GreenGoo]

If it was in high school, hasn't the statute of limitations passed? Seems unlikely that the FBI would be able to do much with this. Seems like the more feasible outlet would be to talk to reporters, and get them to do some digging and write something up on what probably happened.

We'll see what happens, I guess.

I assumed the statute of limitations had passed for Moore's predations as well. There is zero chance the criminal system does anything here. Politically however, it could do a lot of damage, depending on the facts. Getting the FBI involved would sure help the story once you go to the press.

[Paingod]

Worked out well for Anita Hill.

Maybe a little #MeToo momentum will make the difference?

[hepcat]

I would normally say that this smacks of an unfair smear campaign. But Trump created the handbook for this kind of behavior, so screw Kavanaugh. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Or in this case, the mud.

Damn you for making me defend Trump, but to be fair, he hardly created the handbook for political smearing.

True, but I don't believe anyone has gone to the levels that Trump has. So my "screw you, you made your own bed" comment still stands. You jump on board the HMS Trump, you're a scumbag who deserves anything bad that happens to you.

[Kurth]

I would normally say that this smacks of an unfair smear campaign. But Trump created the handbook for this kind of behavior, so screw Kavanaugh. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Or in this case, the mud.

Damn you for making me defend Trump, but to be fair, he hardly created the handbook for political smearing.

True, but I don't believe anyone has gone to the levels that Trump has. So my "screw you, you made your own bed" comment still stands. You jump on board the HMS Trump, you're a scumbag who deserves anything bad that happens to you.

Nope.

[hepcat]

Yup

[Paingod]

Trump isn't politics. He's a disgusting waste of skin.

Trump is a destructive narcissist with no concept of what it takes to run a country. You can be a Republican and be against someone like that. I'm with Hepcat on this one.

[hepcat]

His childish rant about the death toll in Puerto Rico pushed me over my Trump idiocy threshold before noon even. So I'm extra cantankerous about this orange ass today.

[GreenGoo]

I'm unsympathetic to Kavanaugh having to deal with slimy politics. Do I condone them? No. The ends do not justify the means (at least not yet. Are slimy politics worse or better than large scale protests?). Removing norms and everyone wallowing in the muck is EXACTLY what was predicted to happen and was feared to happen when Drumpf arrived in the WH.

Surprise! It's happening (potentially. We have exactly zero information, which is itself informative). That it's happening to drumpf's SCOTUS nomination is pure karma.

If this whole thing turns out to be nothing but a smear (and it sure smells like it) then I will condemn it.

In the meantime, reap what you sow.

[Paingod]

If this whole thing turns out to be nothing but a smear (and it sure smells like it) then I will condemn it.

I agree that it does - but it's got some basically verifiable facts - like if the accuser actually attended the same school as him at the right age. That severely limits the number of people that can be propped up as pawns. There should also be a trail of evidence that may either say the accuser is a stand-up person, or someone who's spent a lot of time causing problems for people - or has a strong political bias to weigh in on.

What's eerier is that Kavanaugh and Gorsuch went to the same school and would have been there at the same time as the accuser. With an enrollment of 490, the world seems pretty small.

[Pyperkub]

I'm unsympathetic to Kavanaugh having to deal with slimy politics. Do I condone them? No. The ends do not justify the means (at least not yet. Are slimy politics worse or better than large scale protests?). Removing norms and everyone wallowing in the muck is EXACTLY what was predicted to happen and was feared to happen when Drumpf arrived in the WH.

Surprise! It's happening (potentially. We have exactly zero information, which is itself informative). That it's happening to drumpf's SCOTUS nomination is pure karma.

If this whole thing turns out to be nothing but a smear (and it sure smells like it) then I will condemn it.

In the meantime, reap what you sow.

Seeing as how he was a key component of the Clinton Investigation/Impeachment proceedings, I have no problem either.

[El Guapo]

If it was in high school, hasn't the statute of limitations passed? Seems unlikely that the FBI would be able to do much with this. Seems like the more feasible outlet would be to talk to reporters, and get them to do some digging and write something up on what probably happened.

We'll see what happens, I guess.

I assumed the statute of limitations had passed for Moore's predations as well. There is zero chance the criminal system does anything here. Politically however, it could do a lot of damage, depending on the facts. Getting the FBI involved would sure help the story once you go to the press.

Yeah, there was no indication of FBI involvement in the Moore matter (I assume because of the SoL issue). So I would assume the same here. So why is Feinstein referring it to the FBI?

[Paingod]

So why is Feinstein referring it to the FBI?

If we cannot possibly elect HRC because the FBI might be investigating her, then we cannot possibly appoint Kavanaugh while they're investigating.

Using Republican logic against themselves. She fails to grasp that they have no rules or moral compass left to worry about.

[GreenGoo]

Yeah, there was no indication of FBI involvement in the Moore matter (I assume because of the SoL issue). So I would assume the same here. So why is Feinstein referring it to the FBI?

Dun, dun, duh....

Why indeed?

[Sepiche]

So why is Feinstein referring it to the FBI?

If we cannot possibly elect HRC because the FBI might be investigating her, then we cannot possibly appoint Kavanaugh while they're investigating.

Using Republican logic against themselves. She fails to grasp that they have no rules or moral compass left to worry about.

But those rules only apply to women, Democrats, and minorities... it's the implied subtext to all Republican arguments these days.

[Grifman]

This is all pretty fruitless. Unless you think Trump is going to appoint someone more to your liking than Kavaugh (unlikely), this is only delaying the inevitable. Trump is going to appoint another SC justice. If you think defeating Kavaugh is a political win, even if you lose the war, I guess that's great. But it really doesn't change things, IMO.

[Pyperkub]

Interesting hypothesis on the letter:

This raises the question: why get the FBI involved? For starters, sexual assault is a matter for state or local police, not the feds. Additionally, the woman said she doesn’t want to come forward. There’s a fairly simple possible reason.

When Supreme Court nominees are selected, they go through a whole lot more than just a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They also go through a rigorous vetting process by the FBI, which includes hours of interviews. According to a PBS News Hour report:

Prospective justices are put through the nation’s most thorough background check, an invasive process where nothing is off-limits. After all, a surprise dredged up later could scuttle confirmation. So candidates’ taxes, writings, childhoods, business dealings, medical histories and, yes, love lives, are all scrutinized for potential red flags.

That means that federal investigators may have asked Kavanaugh questions about any crimes he may have committed or been accused of, as well as questions about past romantic relationships. If Kavanaugh had been accused of criminal activity–particularly sexual misconduct–in his past, and he lied about it during the vetting process, that itself could be grounds for criminal charges for providing a false statement to federal investigators.

[El Guapo]

This is all pretty fruitless. Unless you think Trump is going to appoint someone more to your liking than Kavaugh (unlikely), this is only delaying the inevitable. Trump is going to appoint another SC justice. If you think defeating Kavaugh is a political win, even if you lose the war, I guess that's great. But it really doesn't change things, IMO.

There's no harm in running everything to ground. First, it's what the Senate is supposed to be doing. Second, it imposes a political cost on the Republicans (fairly). Third, while it's a long shot, Kavanaugh's polling is bad enough that something explosive enough could cause Collins and maybe one other Senator to get weak knees. If Trump needs to start over, he'd have to ram them through the Senate in even less time. It's an extra-long shot to keep a new Trump nominee from getting confirmed until January (when there's a ~ 33% chance of a Democratic Senate!), but I don't see much reason not to try.

[Smoove_B]

Interesting hypothesis on the letter:

I was thinking maybe the FBI was involved because somehow there was a connection between alleged sexual misconduct and the mysterious levels of debt that he had over a decade (due to baseball tickets LOL) that suddenly disappeared. Was the debt tied to payoffs or extortion in the same vein as Hastert?

[GreenGoo]

This is all pretty fruitless. Unless you think Trump is going to appoint someone more to your liking than Kavaugh (unlikely), this is only delaying the inevitable.

See, if you're a pessimist you only have the delay 2 years. If you can delay one year, why not two?

If you're an optimist, you might only have to delay for a few more months.

[Sepiche]

We all laughed at Republicans for holding the Garland seat for the next President... that turned out to be a gamble that paid off for them (at least in the short term).

[hepcat]

Watch them find out he was actually a serial murder as a teenager and that the cops were paid off by his parents or something. They'll even provide proof. Then Trump will tweet out that a good man was ruined by the dems.

[GreenGoo]

We all laughed at Republicans for holding the Garland seat for the next President... that turned out to be a gamble that paid off for them (at least in the short term).

I didn't laugh. It was a complete betrayal of their duty to govern.

I didn't care much because only an idiot would vote for reality tv star with no qualifications who's entire persona is a facade.

How many idiots could there be, anyway?

edit: Also, your politics are just a spectator sport for me, usually. Who knew that the US/Canada applecart could be turned over so easily?

[Pyperkub]

More forward thinking issues with Kavanaugh:

the Senate process yielded only breadcrumbs as answers to the questions we identified as crucial for assessing how Judge Kavanaugh might rule in cases impacting your rights online.

Of the topics we identified, mass surveillance was one of the few discussed in last week’s hearings. During an exchange with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Judge Kavanaugh—who worked in a senior capacity in the White House under the Bush administration—flatly declared that he had no role in the “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” one of the Bush administration’s many mass surveillance programs.

Kavanaugh did, however, allude to other mass surveillance programs. In response to Sen. Leahy’s questions about his role, he stated that he “can’t rule out” having participated in the approval process...

...Setting aside unresolved ethical questions, substantive questions remain not only about Judge Kavanaugh’s previous role in approving unconstitutional government programs, but also his views on the legal justification for mass surveillance.

In another line of questioning from Senator Leahy, Judge Kavanaugh dodged Leahy’s question about the Fourth Amendment rationale for surveillance. In Klayman v. Obama, Judge Kavanaugh presented a troubling analysis: he found that phone companies could turn over customer records to surveillance agencies under an outdated theory known as the “third-party doctrine,” and that even if that rationale were insufficient, the national security interest presents a “special need” to disregard the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

Senator Leahy asked Judge Kavanaugh why he went out of his way to find that the government has the authority to collect records of all domestic phone calls even though Congress had recently passed the Leahy-Lee USA Freedom Act and the Presidential Civil Liberties and Oversight Board had recently issued a report concluding that mass surveillance of telephone records was neither necessary to stop terrorism, nor even helpful.

Under oath, Judge Kavanaugh acknowledged that the recent U.S. v. Carpenter decision negates his analysis of the third-party doctrine, but he side-stepped his troubling legal analysis regarding the Fourth Amendment justification for mass surveillance, which was at the heart of Sen. Leahy’s question.

[Smoove_B]

The New Yorker has some more information:

The woman, who has asked not to be identified, first approached Democratic lawmakers in July, shortly after Trump nominated Kavanaugh. The allegation dates back to the early nineteen-eighties, when Kavanaugh was a high-school student at Georgetown Preparatory School, in Bethesda, Maryland, and the woman attended a nearby high school. In the letter, the woman alleged that, during an encounter at a party, Kavanaugh held her down, and that he attempted to force himself on her. She claimed in the letter that Kavanaugh and a classmate of his, both of whom had been drinking, turned up music that was playing in the room to conceal the sound of her protests, and that Kavanaugh covered her mouth with his hand. She was able to free herself. Although the alleged incident took place decades ago and the three individuals involved were minors, the woman said that the memory had been a source of ongoing distress for her, and that she had sought psychological treatment as a result.

[Captain Caveman]

https://twitter.com/senjudiciary/status ... 3620572161

So Grassley and the GOP have known about this and kept it under wraps for a long time, long enough to go through a lot of effort to have this at the ready if the allegation dropped.

[Smoove_B]

Yeah, based on that, my guess is that they didn't expect her to hand it over to the FBI but instead just bring it up during the hearing. And when she did, they were ready to pounce and decry the "smear tactics" of the Democrats.

This whole event - start to finish - is unfortunate.

[Captain Caveman]

It's such a stupid defense though. I have no idea about how credible the allegation is, but saying "look at all the ladies he didn't try to rape" is idiotic. It's only convincing to people who think that men who have committed rape are transparently evil in all of their interactions.

[GreenGoo]

I think character references are valid in a "he said, she said" situation such as this, but they can only do so much. As you said, "He didn't assault me" does not exonerate him from claims of "he assaulted me".

That's a LOT of women willing to put their own reputations on the line, though. Chances are a lot of those testimonials are of the "who? Yeah, I think I know who you're referring to. No, we didn't have any social interactions that I remember".

What pisses me off is that I probably couldn't get 65 women to remember me, let alone claim I was an honorable man in high school, and I never assaulted anyone, ever.

I'm not even sure I had classes with 65 different women, let alone any sort of significant social interaction where they could form an opinion of me, one way or another.

[Kurth]

It's such a stupid defense though. I have no idea about how credible the allegation is, but saying "look at all the ladies he didn't try to rape" is idiotic. It's only convincing to people who think that men who have committed rape are transparently evil in all of their interactions.

Really? My first thought was that if Kavanaugh is the kind of guy that would rape or assault a woman thirty some years ago, there must be others.

I don't think that all men who have committed rape are necessarily "transparently" evil, but I do think they have defects that would be difficult to keep under wraps for three decades. I don't know. Maybe that's a bad assumption to make, but I always figured that if a man has the capacity to rape a woman, he's also got seriously harmful and negative views of women that would adversely impact at least some of his interactions with other women.

Hard for me to imagine a single, isolated incident like this with no other signs or recurrence over that time period.

[LawBeefaroni]

It's insane that they have a prepared letter signed by 65 classmates from 30+ years ago. Doesn't anyone see how absurd and how far down the rabbit shitgoblin hole this all is? We are just insane.

[Archinerd]

There's a good lesson here.
Everybody should prepare a list of women who have no complaint against you. You know, just in case someone decides to accuse you of doing something you didn't do.

[GreenGoo]

There's a good lesson here.
Everybody should prepare a list of women who have no complaint against you. You know, just in case someone decides to accuse you of doing something you didn't do.

Or did!

[Zarathud]

You don't prepare the letter without being worried about an allegation. I don't know if that makes it more or less credible.

What upsets me more is why did they have this letter ready but not all the documents from Kavanaugh's time in the Bush administration? Kavanaugh once served as a partisan operative, and that isn't what the SCOTUS needs now.

[Zaxxon]

why did they have this letter ready but not all the documents from Kavanaugh's time in the Bush administration?

Srsly? I thought that was self-evident. One helps him get confirmed, the other does not.

[El Guapo]

It's such a stupid defense though. I have no idea about how credible the allegation is, but saying "look at all the ladies he didn't try to rape" is idiotic. It's only convincing to people who think that men who have committed rape are transparently evil in all of their interactions.

Really? My first thought was that if Kavanaugh is the kind of guy that would rape or assault a woman thirty some years ago, there must be others.

I don't think that all men who have committed rape are necessarily "transparently" evil, but I do think they have defects that would be difficult to keep under wraps for three decades. I don't know. Maybe that's a bad assumption to make, but I always figured that if a man has the capacity to rape a woman, he's also got seriously harmful and negative views of women that would adversely impact at least some of his interactions with other women.

Hard for me to imagine a single, isolated incident like this with no other signs or recurrence over that time period.

It's relevant to whether there are likely to be other women, but it's not relevant to whether or not the specific allegations raised by this woman are true. But of course the White House would like to use it for both.